


Vi et animo

by zombieboyband



Series: Ex Gratia [1]
Category: Hannibal Rising (2007), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-27
Updated: 2012-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:46:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombieboyband/pseuds/zombieboyband
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik and Hannibal on the hunt, on the run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vi et animo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [etirabys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etirabys/gifts).



> For etirabys, my favorite, who builds worlds that give me no rest. Set after [Condonare](http://archiveofourown.org/works/272586).

Healed enough to walk isn't healed enough to run, and Erik's body has been one big bruise for years now, regardless. He's tired within a few days of following Hannibal, but they keep on, crossing city squares and boarding buses and stealing rides on trains. It's hard for Erik to go back to the life of a hunter and a fugitive even after a short time of softness, but Hannibal doesn't even blink. They travel at night and sleep during the day in shifts, and Hannibal radiates the warmth of a sound body even as Erik runs increasingly ragged. So: nothing is new.

Still, Erik pushes himself. Being saved once is enough and he doesn't want to owe Hannibal _favors_ , and he can do this. Sometimes his shoulder flares up, all searing heat and monolithic pain, but he's fine. He can keep up. 

The idea of Hannibal waiting for him is terrifying.

It's not until Erik slips, stumbles, and nearly falls off a ladder that he realizes it: the blank look on Hannibal's face as he watches Erik regain his grip is his version of _patience_ , and Erik hasn't been keeping up at all.

++

Tucked against a bale of hay, secreted away in a truck, Erik nurses the wounds to his pride and in the milky twilight makes himself realize--

He doesn't need to be faster than Hannibal: he just needs to be faster than their quarry.

++

Sometimes Erik misses the softness he briefly knew: the softness of Charles's hair, of his bed, of _Charles_. This only makes the rain that soaks him colder and the floorboards of the cellars they sneak into for sleep harder, dustier.

If Hannibal misses anything, Erik can't tell.

++

At first he'd worried, wondered: _has anything changed?_

Had the--the--

(he doesn't even know what to call it inside his own head)

\--last night at Charles's flat changed anything between Hannibal and himself?

Yet Hannibal gives him the usual amount of space, paying him neither more nor less mind, touching him only to examine the freshly healed wound in his shoulder, and then not at all.

What Erik is truly afraid of is that Hannibal will speak now--

But he doesn't.

++

One day they're cornered: Erik takes too long to kill a man. It's one of Shaw's men, really one of Shaw's men, and Erik remembers so much. There's a pile of teeth on the seat next to him with some fingernails are mixed in and Erik is still not satisfied. The molars with gold fillings are still in; it's how Erik is keeping his mouth pried open. The fierce scream-song sweetness of wild vengeance ( _justice_ ) overwhelms Erik and it's all he feels, hears, sees, until his snarl hits a high note and with sublime joy he stabs the man in the neck with his own fine silver pen.

There's a scrambling at the door and Hannibal, never too far and always near by, skids into the plush train car. He turns and slams the door shut behind him, but his animal hiss of annoyance is enough to tell Erik that he's being pursued.

Erik blinks.

There's men pounding at the other door, too. They have, by the sound of it, been there for a while.

Slim body taunt, Hannibal whirls, head jerking snake-fast to once source of sound and then the other. He's so deadly, but there are so _many_ guards.

Erik blinks again, looks down at his hands. He's trembling. There's no blood on his hands, caked under his fingernails, staining his cuticles. There doesn't have to be. His hands look as clean as an ungloved surgeon's.

There's a wound in his thigh, though. How long has he been bleeding and not noticed?

Pounding.

The doors are going to give.

Hannibal exhales sharply to get his attention, then jerks his head up towards the ceiling, sharp chin pointing at the electric lights.

Erik nods.

He's still trembling. There's no _time_ \--

Hannibal chooses a door, turns fast to face it.

Erik, shaking, closes his eyes. Hannibal is buying him time.

A breath and he holds: he focuses and counts the guns behind the door that's closest to breaking. He counts them, extends his awareness so he can feel their shapes--the length of the barrel, the cut of the grip. Without moving them, he can feel their weight, their balance. His feeling seeps across the stocks and up the barrels, then in and down. A moment more and he'd be able to get each individual bullet--

The door breaks and four men tumble into the room. 

The lights go out, and Hannibal is ready.

Two of them don't even get the chance to learn that their guns appear to have jammed.

Erik tries to ignore the noises, in the dark. Instead, he reaches for their metal, pulling, crushing, pushing.

Then the other door bursts, and both Hannibal and Erik are on them.

++

When the train slows down enough to make hopping off viable, it's nearly dawn. Pale light streaks across the sky, not yet warm, not yet bright. They trudge through the treeline before they find a clearing and stop. 

Hannibal looks serene, the fine bones under his skin sharp, his face covered in dried blood. He adjusts the strap of his satchel--dinner service had come to the train car before Erik did, and there had been a covered platter, some wine, spices. Supplies are good to have. Hannibal never misses an opportunity to improve their rations.

Erik is still intermittently shaking, and looking at Hannibal doesn't help: his face is blood splattered but his lips are clean. As usual, Erik tries to not think about it. He kept the lights off in the train car for the whole time Hannibal was with him.

Eventually, he can't stand it.

"You used to wipe your mouth," Erik says, into the silence.

Unabashed, Hannibal gives the tiniest of shrugs, then makes a show of running his plush pink tongue over his expressive lips, his clean small white teeth.

It's the most they've spoken--communicated--in weeks, including hastily scrawled notes, but it isn't the first time Erik's seen Hannibal drenched in blood. One of those must be exhausting, because Erik drops down, sits with his back against a tree, closes his eyes. This time he isn't closing them in concentration. For a moment he wonders how Hannibal can be so uncompromisingly unapologetic, but then he pushes the old thought away tiredly. All he can do right now is breathe.

He feels, rather than sees, Hannibal drop down on his knees next to him. And the fingers poking at his thigh, around his new wound, are expected, as is the almost fussy, put-upon noise that Hannibal makes after this briefest examination.

 _I know, I know_ , Erik thinks, but does not say, _You keep patching me up and I keep ripping myself open_. The thought itself is wearying, and Erik, against his will, sighs.

The hand soothing over his brow is a surprise. The tenderness of the touch makes him stiffen--

Inside Erik, something shifts, breaks--

He moves towards Hannibal and finds his body coiled and strong, ready to toss him aside, instead of warm and melting. But that's Hannibal all over, and even though Erik freezes after the initial forward push, his clumsy gesture is enough: Hannibal understands.

Their mouths lock together and it's nothing like kissing Charles, which is Erik's only true point of comparison.

Their kiss is heat and blood they each push, push, push. Erik's electric instead of exhausted now, limbs tingling with some barely held in current. The ever present coins in his pockets jingle with tension, and Hannibal wrestles him to the ground--

Erik shoves back and realizes that's the point. Tender touches might make him freeze, but this struggle, this roughness, is what he can allow himself to need.

And of course Hannibal knows it.

Hannibal pushes and Erik pushes back but makes a pathetic needy noise in the back of his throat, which gives Hannibal just enough room to wiggle his sharp, wet tongue into Erik's mouth. His tongue strokes the hard palate of Erik's mouth, then his molars. Erik winds his arms around Hannibal's and then grips his biceps hard enough to bruise, but the hard sinew he finds doesn't move away from the crush at all.

His thigh hurts, but it's only a stab wound. They'll deal with it later.

With a growl, Erik manages to flip them over, flattening Hannibal out onto his back. There's an amused _heh_ , and then Erik smashes their lips together again. He kisses deep and tries desperately not to think about the tongue pressing against his in turn--where it's been, what it's tasted. Against all his expectations, Erik manages to forget. Briefly he thinks of Charles--how wretched it must be, to see into minds--but it's an abstract thought, all jelly at the edges. Then there's only the rush of blood, and he's pushing, pushing, pushing, wanting to get closer and

( _how many men have we killed together?_ )

he's pinning Hannibal down with all his weight when he realizes that he's hard; they both are, and rubbing against each other.

With a gasp, Erik pulls away and off because that's not--he isn't--it's _Hannibal_ , for fuck's sake--

And Hannibal surges up cleanly and in one swooping motion fits their bodies together again.

Dazed, his shoulder blades now digging into the dirt, Erik thinks dimly: _has he been willing, all this time?_

Had Hannibal-- _wanted?_

Wanted him?

And yet he hadn't--not even once, not at all--

 _He was a perfect gentleman_ , Charles says in Erik's head, and Erik groans into Hannibal's mouth.

They're rutting in earnest now, and Erik dimly registers the taste of blood, opening his eyes to see Hannibal's lips and chin smeared pink. Erik knows the old, spit-wet blood is all over his own face now, too, and when his trembling hands bury into Hannibal's hair, his long fingers find some that never dried. 

Hannibal's hand worms between them, and he lifts his hips up so that only the slightest of pressures connects him to Erik's cock. There's a keening, wretched noise from Erik at that loss, and he squirms slightly under Hannibal's body, until deft fingers find his fresh wound and--

press.

Erik gasps and arches up, slamming their bodies together, hands now on Hannibal's shoulders to drag him down. Hannibal answers or maybe protests; Erik can't tell and he tangles their legs together, desperate for more leverage. His teeth find Hannibal's shoulder and Erik hopes to hell that Hannibal won't return the favor. Even now, he's wary of Hannibal's mouth.

There's a sharp intake of breath from Hannibal, the first sound to almost betray him, so Erik bites, and Hannibal's answering grunt of maybe-pain makes him come so hard he cries out loud and ragged.

Erik's orgasm pounds through him and seems to go on for a long time, but Hannibal's busily shoving his hands over his head, pining him down, and rutting against him hard and fast and--

When he comes, Hannibal goes shock still, eyes closed, breaths long and careful.

Their dicks pulse against each other in the aftermath, and Hannibal slides against him almost lazily, like a satisfied cat, before rolling off.

Erik opens his eyes and pants at the now bright sky.

They stay quiet, together, but Hannibal gets up first. He rearranges his clothing and waits.

Finally, Erik risks sitting up.

Hannibal points to his leg.

Erik nods; he knows how this, at least, goes. They need to keep moving, need to find a stream to boil water to wash out wounds. Mostly, they need to keep moving.

Hannibal leads, and Erik follows.


End file.
